Here is the site I use to track how much a barrel of oil is costing these days.

http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/commodities/energyprices.html

Oil is going to $8 a gallon unless we start drilling domestically.

We are drilling domestically.

Not up to the minute but a really cool site for historical jet fuel spot price trends is.
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_spt_s1_d.htm

Best of all they have it all in an Excel spreadsheet, tracking daily jet fuel prices and such all the way back to 1986. So if you are half way competent in Excel you can make all kind of cool charts and graphs depicting how it's the end of the world because of George Bush.
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/xls/pet_pri_spt_s1_d.xls

7/3/08 Jet fuel was $4.33 a gallon at SIN. Exactly 10 years before that it was 37 cents a gallon. A 1,170% price increase in 10 years.

Laguy, you know what I mean. It's been 25 years since we built a drilling rig here.

And if Congress decided to expand drilling it would take nearly that amount of time (well, not quite, but it would be a long time) before we saw any oil from the effort. It's not going to do anything for oil prices now or in the near or mid-term future.

And I would just as soon see something other than oil be discovered. Drilling for more oil does not help when what is actually needed is what will replace oil. So, changing oil drilling policy will NOT solve our oil "problem". It only keeps the monkey on our back.

It's time for tough luv on our oil habits. We need to stop being whiny little bitches and get on with what's next.

Oh, yeah, GW is not the end of the world.
Start of rant.

I'm just surprised that it took the "real Republicans" 7 years to see that they aligned themselves with a fuckwit (and supporting cast... and evildoers and soothsayers) that destroys everything they hold dear. If only it were the money lenders, we would have a chance.

It will take 20 years or more to undo the damage that is undoable, The rest is our legacy that will infect our freedom, integrity, self-respect and environment forever.

Smitopher, how does one reconcile ranting about how we waste oil and how we must all learn to live with less of it rather than using more of what is available to us, and at the same time flying half way around the planet burning tons of jet fuel simply to get your dick sucked. The later seems perfectly acceptable to me, but seems a little incongruous to preaching to 'other' people they must learn to live with less fuel and higher prices.

Well...
I was not ranting about wasting oil and how we should learn to live with less.

I was ranting that drill drill drill for more oil was not the "solution" to our dependence upon oil and all of the problems that using all that oil brings. $5.00/gal gasoline and $200/barrel (although these seem like bubble prices) oil are the solution.

Why? Because then some smart mofo is going to invent something that will be the clean and locally available, a technology that can replace oil. Then we will learn how to make it better and better so that when the price of oil collapses, this new fangled technology will still be cheaper and cleaner and available without having to traffic with the various evil regimes or piss of the various religious fanatics to keep us from jonesin.

The price of oil going through the roof will only motivate and accelerate this process. Oh, you will notice that I did not advocate a silly fake tax or mandate "thou shalt" something or other. Just a pure market driven response.

Now why not drill drill drill? Because, first and foremost, it won't do anything useful. Any additional oil produced will be insignificant and it is widely acknowledged that it will have nill impact on supply, consumption, availability and/or demand.

So, drill drill drill won't help, will it hurt? I suggest that it would. I all for preventing that tragedy of the commons thing.

So, all in all, my rant is not incongruous with me flying halfway around the world to get my dick sucked.

Just FYI, We may be in the same karaoke room come the end of July. I tried to find a way to use the TIJ NRT suggestion but since I have relo'ed to TexASS, I could not make it work. It did have availability. Thanks.

P.S.
My GW rant was fun. Thanks.

(Message edited by smitopher on July 15, 2008)

Nobody can blame this President for the lack of fuel alternatives today. That shame belongs square in the lap of liberal enviromentalists who believe depriving us of domestic supply will force us to develop alternatives. Well, sorry guys, it didn't work.

Folks who would rather see an owl saved that a family fed are solely responsible for limiting the choice in fuel, mostly to exports, and prevent domestic oil rig construction, for three decades. Capitalism doesn't work that way. The money has to be there, a reason to develop them. We are not communist, to the chagrin of those folks, and cannot be starved into action.

I myself have two daily vehicles, an SUV and a Prius. Enviromentalists have had plenty of time in congress to make it happen and override any veto. They haven't. Reason one, because they are politicians. Reason two, because they don't really want the alternatives at market. No different than Iraq, finding Osama or the war on drugs. If they really wanted results, they would make it financially feasible and enriching, not just "green."

I'm not voting for him, but McCain made the best words yet when he offered up real money for energy alternatives at market. I like my Prius, but it sure isn't an SUV.

I enjoy watching the Rep vs. Dem arguments, even though you won't solve anything by making your stand with either political party.

(Message edited by fcbkpr on July 15, 2008)

---

quote:

Fcbkpr dribbled: That shame belongs square in the lap of liberal enviromentalists

---

Texas is close to Mexico no? And Texas has tons of connecting flights to all kinds of Mexican cities on AeroMexico, Continental and Delta. And AeroMexico connects all Mexican cities and has outstanding award availability so if you could take an extra connection or two I bet you have all kinds of easy award options via AeroMexico.

If I see you in July I will have to buy you a drink. Some of my best friends are liberals. I have determined that even if you guys are a bit confused sometimes you are usually pretty likable guys. Don't take me to seriously as I do not take myself to seriously.

Now back to oil prices. I do believe there may be a speculative bubble. But drill, drill, drill is a typical market driven response and surely would help. As for alternatives. There are viable alternatives for cars and such but jet fuel is a hard case. There are not really good alternatives to kerosene for jet engines. There is a process that makes a marginally acceptable jet fuel using natural gas as a raw material and bio diesel like fuels might work but will probably take as much energy to grow as goes into the jet engine. As for global warming, environment and all of that. Oil will be consumed in huge quantities by someone somewhere until it is all used up. Nothing is going to change that, it is just to compelling. If I don't burn it, the Chinese will so I might as well be the one. If it causes global warming, that is apparently the way things are, and unless and until we control China, India et al it is going to happen so the only realistic strategy when confronted with the inevitable is to adapt and go on with life.

In a way I am doing all the environmentalists a favor by helping to burn up all that pesky oil as quickly as possible. If we conserve and drag it out another 100 years we will never get around to pursuing alternatives.

If the US went bk, China would go bust, and then in reorganization, we could make the new $ worth $R 10 Brazilian reals and price gas @ $0.25 / gallon. Flights to Rio would also leave every hour from JFK, IDA, PHZ, SAN & SFO. Centarus would also be $2 / US.

Oh how nice.

MM

*

(Message edited by xenono on July 15, 2008)

In retrospect, I have to hand it to Bush. Bush comes from a long line of oil men, but there is little doubt in my mind, that Bush will go down as the most successful president in the history of the country. Iraqi oil fields, previously unavailable to American oil interests due to Saddam, have recently been made available. In addition to that I believe that Bush will be successful in opening up even more American reserves as many in this thread suggest. Once he leaves office, I don't think he will go on the lecture circuit like Clinton. He'll just go back to the oil industry from where he came, and they will pay him handsomely for his effort while in office.

Who would pay to hear Bush mangle a speech? I'm not even sure he would want to do it, although the money is attractive.

We have two oilmen in the White House, and everyone wonders why the price of oil is four times higher now than when they took office.

I was thinking whale oil might make a good substitute for jet fuel. After all, jet fuel is just kerosene, and kerosene has historically been widely used for oil lamps and before that, whale oil was widely used for oil lamps. So if they are both equally useful in lamps they must have similar properties. Therefore I surmise that whale oil is a good substitute for kerosene based jet fuel and since whale oil comes from a renewable natural bio-source I believe it should qualify as a carbon neutral bio-fuel. After all it takes a million years for new petroleum oil to be created but it probably only takes 20 years or so to grow a new whale. And in that 20 years, all those jet fuel whales will consume tons of plankton which consumes tons of CO2, probably ending global warming and ending our dependence on petroleum to get laid.

Either that or global warming will render Southern California more like Thailand and all the rice farmers will move here but their crops will fail do to destruction of the environment and faced with failed rice crops their daughters will turn to prostitution.

I say save the whales and use the large quantities of gas coming out of I am Sancho's ass instead.

BT-

Don't you mean Bush will be the most successful ex-President in US history? While a complete failure as a leader of the country, he has set the table for he and his oil cronies so that he will be richer than God once out of DC.

BD,

That is exactly what I meant. Imagine if you were an oil company, and you had the president of the United States at your disposal. What would you try to accomplish? And how would you go about it?

Bush ran the playbook to perfection, and the results for the oil industry have been outrageously big. He will be rewarded well when he leaves the White House.

Remember when Bush put Cheney in charge of the Energy Commission? What a masterful play! That one stroke, moved the country's focus away from alternative energy, and towards business as usual.

A round trip to Asia on a fuel efficient 777 burns about 280 gallons of jet fuel PER PASSENGER on board. If a hybrid car gets 40 miles to a gallon then 280 gallons of gas would take it 11,200 miles. About what the average American drives in a year OR your one little trip. Thus you guys who are flying half way around the world to get your dicks sucked are in no position to preach to anyone about fuel conservation. If you will take a stand and come out and say with conviction that it is morally wrong to waste oil flying half way around the world to get your dicks sucked and will stop blaming others for wasting oil until after you have stopped it yourself than I will disagree with you but respect you for your convictions. If you hypocritically criticize others for wasting oil when you yourselves probably have a carbon footprint the size of Texas you just sound silly. You cant have it both ways. If you personally use massive amounts of oil for purely prurient reasons than you must do everything in your power to pursue more supply. If you are willing to give up your prurient pursuits for the greater good of mankind than you can preach. Otherwise drill drill drill.

Oil is high because a lot of very very rich whales need somewhere to park their cash and get some return. T bonds ain paying jack, and mortgage backed securities are toxic. They are using commodities as financial instruments and making nice returns to the detriment of us that are on the recieving ends of oil and food prices.

Just who are these whales? Well they are no strangers to our Prez and Vice Prez.

Nowhere did I mention that conservation would help the oil crisis, nor did I complain about high gas prices. Let them go to $20 per gallon and $5,000 per RT to LOS, I really don't give a f*!@ as it doesn't affect my lifestyle. As an investor, it is easy to see that claims about speculators being the cause of high prices is absolute garbage. You can buy futures in anything, not just oil; there is just as much opportunity to get rich in soybeans and pork bellies as in oil; it takes all of $1000 to get involved in such investing, not zillions. If you want to blame investors for the price of oil, you're gonna have to blame all of them, from the little daytrader to big institutions all around the world who trade the US futures and commodities. That pig won't fly. Sorry.

If you look at what costs what in a gallon of gas you will see how much goes to the supplier. Bitch about the refineries and domestic oil companies all you want, but it's the supplier that hits paydirt and controls the price of oil. You're bitching about the wrong oil companies. You should be bitching about the oil companies in South America, Russia and the Gulf, they're the ones padding their pockets. Such oil companies would be under the control of competition here in America if we drilled closer to home.

Point remains solid... if we drilled domestically, the price would go down.

(Message edited by fcbkpr on July 20, 2008)

FCB,

Where would you drill, how much would it cost, how much would these new wells pump, and how much would that reduce the price of oil?

Thank you FCBKPR for sharing your amazing stupidity. Who is this moron anyway? His account is less than a month old and he has only made 36 posts, 5 of them right wing bullshit about drilling our way out of the current mess. Republicans are really getting desperate when they assign a propoganda minister to Club Hombre.

The reason America has not been drilling domestically is that we have already SUCKED DRY every known easily accessible field of high quality crude oil. Most hombres know all about getting SUCKED DRY, so why does FCKBPR think us so gullible. ANWAR may have some oil, but it is not easily extracted during the cold months which make up most of the year. Besides most oil produced in Alaska is sold to other nations and there is no reason to expect anything to change in that regard. We cannot allow ANWAR to be plundered for a quick profit by Bu$hs buddies, we need to save it for a day when our energy problems are far more severe than now.

No way was any stock holder corporation going to build outrageously expensive offshore drilling platforms when cheap oil was readily available on the world market. The cost of crude still has not surpassed the point where energy from Colorado oil shale or Canadian tar sands is competitive either.

Now that the overseas prices have quadrupled in a few months, idiots are out there crying that we can drill drill drill and all our problems will go away. They simply ignore the inconvienient fact that it takes 6 to 10 years to develop a new oil field and pipeline infrastructure, then the problems just return after those fields are SUCKED DRY. I really wish these idiots, especially fools who support that complete fraud John Senile McBush, would just go away.

John Sidney McBush also thinks nuclear energy is the answer to our problems. That is another outrageously expensive and dangerous proposition. Just ask the folks who lived within a 100 mile radius around Chernobyl how brilliant that plan is. Furthermore, we need to develop a safe way to send radioactive waste to the planet Venus before building any more reactors. Yucca Mountain is not happening.

What I really need to hear from our next generation of politicians is a plan to develop efficient elevated mass transit that will get us across town faster than traffic. Building it would create tens of thousands of jobs and we need to demand that every piece of it is built in our own country.

We also need a new rechargable vehicle infrastructure in public parking garages and shopping malls. My round trip commute exceeds the 40 mile range of the pending Chevy Volt, but that car would be fine if I could recharge at home and office or just drive to the nearest park and ride lot.

There are plenty of ideas to address our energy problems, but oil and uranium are amongst the dumbest proposals. However, more radiation may help solve the over population and Social Security funding problems that plague our nation.

Hot4ass, are you serious? with all due respect, the guy is just expressing his viewpoint and you call him stupid and a moron? Hey, nothing like a little friendly exchange of ideas and viewpoints between board members.

BTW, do you really think our dependence on oil is all the republicans fault? thats interesting.

I dont know if nuclear is the answer but regarding safety, of the 400 plus nuclear reactors in the world, there have only been two major reactor accidents (although it sucks if you are one of the two) - Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. One was contained without anyone getting hurt and the other, well, that was a mess. The bottom line is these are the only major accidents to have occurred in more than 12,700 cumulative reactor-years in operation in over 32 countries. Fuck, even France uses it. Then throw in the 180 or so nuclear ships floating around out there. Now that scares me more than anything. Fuck up the ocean and now we are really in trouble. Why doesn't anyone talk about that?

The energy issue is a complicated deal. We need to explore every avenue available. wind, solar, coal, etc, yes, even drilling, yes I know, 6 to 10 years doesn't do us much good now, but it will in 6 to 10 years (check the math). Although convenient, it does no good to try and blame one political party when they are both at fault. In the end, everyone of us is to blame for our dependency on oil and our lack of action for alternatives. AZ

Hot4ass2, what's going to power the jets I really really really want to fly all over the world in, over the next 30-40 years? When are they going to have those new jets ready that run on magic fairy dust from the energy fairy? Or maybe the wind powered jets or the solar powered jets. Or are you telling me I must sacrifice being able to hop in a jet and fly over to Thailand for a little fun because there is some kind or deer or whale or something that can't get it's dick hard within 100 miles of a oil well.

To the environmentalist types. I am all ears if you have VIABLE alternatives. If you put something viable on the market I will do my part to make you rich. I'm putting a little investment behind wind and natural gas myself. (and since both come freely out of my ass I expect to soon be wealthy). But don't just talk. Do it. Mainly what I hear is environmentalist types complaining but otherwise doing very little else. Environmentalist "ok, guys our job will be to complain about why the Republicans and the oil companies don't do the work for us of giving us cheap alternatives to oil." What scares me is the lack of logic in what I hear from the left. You do everything in your power to block developing any new oil sources and then blame the very guy's who you blocked when limited supply inevitably drives up prices. There is no such thing as limited supply of oil AND low prices. You got what you want. You have successfully limited supply to the point where it drove up prices to the point where some alternatives are now viable that weren't before. But high prices are the oil consequences of getting the limited supply you wanted. Stop blaming others.

As for me, I mainly just want cheap jet fuel so I can continue flying around the planet from country to country getting my dick sucked. I know it is irresponsible of me but I really really like it so I will support whatever side offers my the most viable way to continue it. For me, drill drill drill sounds like a better plan than waiting for the new jets that run on magic fairy dust.

When somebody with a nonsensical name shows up out of nowhere and immediately begins to promote the republican agenda, they need to be slammed for what they are.

There are a number of factors why the current energy mess is very much the fault of republicans:

(1) republicans opposed new automobile fuel efficiency standards at every turn;

(2) republicans changed futures market rules to encourage the speculation driven prices going on now. McCrazy's economic advisor, Phil Grahm, was a big player in that and the Enron debacle;

(3) republicans have constantly opposed funding research into alternative energy and Bu$h has killed every program that he could;

(4) republicans are in love with the single occupancy vehicle and prevent community grants for efficient mass transit; just look at the HUMMER tax credit;

(5) republicans oppose fair labor standards for the people we need to build the new systems and make the advanced education needed to design those systems a personal financial burden;

(6) republicans are all about short term greed instead of long term investment. Just look at how they have burdened our society with unmanagable national debt, unsustainable international trade deficits and policies that encourage maximum personal debt.

(7) republicans are very much behind the mortgage gimmicks that have kept our economy alive for the last eight years and now they want to devalue our dollars even more by bailing out the banks, but offer no relief to the buyer whose ARM suddenly jumped from 3% to 13%.

This is less about short term environmental consequence than sound long term policy. Our planet simply does not have enough fossil fuel to sustain the rapidly growing population. Trashing ANWAR would provide a few months of fuel and nature would eventually repair most of the damage, but would not get us any closer to a sustainable energy policy.

There is no alternative fuel for jet airliners anywhere in the immediate future, that is why we need to reduce the competition for that fuel via more efficient ground transportation. High speed monorail between major US cities could reduce the fuel demand of domestic flights and might even get you from Los Angeles to Los Vegas just as fast.

I suppose that we will still be able to book a nuclear powered cruise ship to LOS when the aviation fuel is gone, but the day of 20 hour flights would end.

Hot4ass2, I can tell you the fundamental reason why you do not have the alternative energy you want. You have been waiting for the Federal Government to provide alternative energy for you. The Federal Government is absolutely the most wasteful and least efficient way of getting anything done. I predict that if you wait for the Federal Government to accomplish your goals we will still be having this discussion 30 years from now. I'll bet you T. Boone Pickens, an oil man motivated by pure money grubbing greed, gets more actually accomplished in the real world towards moving to alternatives in a few years than a million hippies blaming the Republicans for 20 years will ever accomplish. Altruistic of him. Nope, but pure money grubbing greed makes things happen. Waiting for the government to do something makes things fail to happen so it is not surprising nothing has happened.

My stockbroker once told me many years ago..
" those who DON'T know, are saying...
those who know, ain't saying"... this thread is a perfect example of that.

Catocony, I don't have those answers, and neither do the politicians. Only the capitalists who stand to make money from domestic drilling know that. If your point is that domestic drilling will not bring back oil down to where it was, I agree. Alternative energies are what we need, now that the foreign oil producers overseas demand whatever they want, only to see us fill up again and again... it's like the damned drug dealers raising prices and we just keep puffing away without a care. The only way to deal with oil is to need it less from other places whose prices we cannot control. But that won't happen before the elections, so in the meantime, let's get some living wage jobs out of it and build some rigs.

Hot4ass2, do a search for IndySea/IndySeattle, my old names over the years, and you may find that it is you who are the little shit stain without roots on CH. If you're only here for mongering and cannot handle some opposing viewpoints on non-mongering subjects, then stay the fuck in the mongering section. Or, grow up and try asking questions instead of condemning a point of view. You might learn something about your own view in the process. Oh, I like your name, by the way. I'm an ass man myself and do enjoy Pattaya and AC chica offerings along that line. No hard feelings.

Alternative energy is already in my life. I power my house by a four-season stream turning water turbines 24/7. Actually, it's a pretty simple setup that has lasted for years now, basically alternators hooked up to squirrel cages under four-foot heads, wired to charge controllers and deep-cycle batteries. Change alternators and belts regularly for cheap, keep the bearings greased and it's free electricity. Still hooked to the grid. Solar power is near-worthless around Seattle. My power meter runs backwards when we're not home because we sell power back to the utility. But when it comes to oil, damn people, look at how much the suppliers get out of every gallon. The refineries here at home don't get much, and the domestic profit in refining imported oil does NOT increase axiomatically with the price of oil. Neither McCain nor Obama can do one damned thing about what imported goods cost. I suggest we make the best of it, and hoping for change is only going to piss people off that much more.

(Message edited by fcbkpr on July 22, 2008)

H4A2, maybe you should go talk your congressman into proposing this: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan

A workable plan or not? Hell, I don't know. But I'm pretty sure the sun is going to keep raining energy down on our planet for a very long time to come. Certainly as long as anything recognizable as human lives here.

And sancho, don't worry too much about your jet fuel. I'm pretty sure they can make oil from algae (although at how competitive a cost I'm not sure). Given how much trouble I have keeping it from taking over my pool, I should be able to produce enough algae in a summer to power one or two flights to asia.

I_AM_SANCHO -- Although there are many things I find disgusting about T. Boone Pickens (see wikipedia bio), his plan to build electricity generating wind farms and divert natural gas to transportation is a step in the right direction. Sometimes it takes greed to make things happen and sometimes it take government legislation to force the energy industry follow a path of lesser greed.

FCBKPR -- Your last post finally made some sense. Congrats on putting that stream to good use. Although Arizona is short on flowing water, solar options are plenty. However, the fact remains that developing alternatives to fossil fuels and single occupant vehicles will produce quicker and longer lasting results than drilling.

Phoenixguy -- Interesting article. My congresswoman, whom is a personal friend, is one of the champions of solar energy legislation in Washington. Why does this master plan need 40 years? The $420 billion cost is less than our military budget for one year. The article fails to mention a tried and proven method for energy storage; pumping water uphill. The plan also fails to address fossil fuel savings that can be realized with high speed ground transportation between urban centers and that can probably be integrated with the direct current transmission infrastructure. Here is something you may find interesting <http://www.newrules.org/de/archives/000104.html>. Every Democratic candidate for Arizona Corporation commission want to do better than this and all but one of the republican players want to kill it.

T. Boone Pickins -- I knew there was something really fishy about this guy. Here is an article about his real motives for a wind farm along a specific corridor to Dallas
http://www.tucsonweekly.com/gbase/Opinion/Content?oid=oid:113228

http://tinyurl.com/5e8qz3

"House Republicans on Thursday scuttled a bill that Democrats hoped would help lower gasoline prices by forcing the Energy Department to release 70 million barrels of oil — about a three-day supply — from the national stockpile."

Hot4ass2: Thanks for the link to the article describing the real deal on T. Boone Nose Pickins.

(Message edited by LAguy on July 24, 2008)

>>about a three-day supply>>

Oh yeah three days makes a sustainable improvement...

70 million barrels makes a big difference since it would 1) send a message that overspeculation will lead to further "market interuptions", i.e. you losing your shirt if the US intervenes and dumps oil on the market. 2) it actually does lower prices since even a million barrels a day would swing supply/demand quite a bit.

I never said T.Boon Pickens was a nice guy. Did you catch the part about the pure money grubbing greed? But he will in fact bring on line more wind power in the next few years than the all the hippies in the entire state of California have managed to bring online in the sates history to date.

BTW. In Texas and the Midwest they have been fighting over water rights for the last 100 years. It is a national pastime in that part of the country. Kind of like the same as rioting is a sport in Indonesia, likewise fighting over water rights is a sport in Texas.